Post #509645 by Bay Park Buzzy on Sun, Feb 7, 2010 12:48 PM

On 2010-02-05 22:53, Zeta wrote:
What about this one?

It is almost a meter tall. Very heavy. It has green velvet under it so it doesn't scratch any surface.

I'll just throw out some thoughts that I have on this one.

First, I try to catagorize it. Hawaiin, Maori, Marq, Cook, easter Island. etc. I find it to be Hawaiian in style based on its features.

Next I try to determine its place of origin...

Can't tell the woodtype, so it's hard to say wheter or not it orginated in Hawaii.

Then I look at the quality of the carving. Not too good. More of a log drawing than a full 3d round carving. Real shallow and the body is done wrong. He might even have been using a photo for a source. The headress has a few problems as well. The intention of the carver was to make a traditional styled Hawaiian tiki, most likely what we would refer to as a Lono, but he didn't really understand how to execute it correctly.

Since I figure this carver wasn't that good skills wise, he probably didn't just carve it up out of his head. I next look to see what his original source of inspiration was. First I try to figure if was from an original Hawaiian carving, or some sort of newer polypop source. For this tiki I can pretty much guarantee that it wasn't from one of the surviving original Hawaiian carvings. There's only a couple hundred or so out there, and none that I've seen or found yet match this particular carving.

So that sends my brain through the image archives I hold in my head on polypop and souvineer Hawaiian carvings. As best as I can tell, the original source was this piece:

I kind of had to photo it off center so that the details one the side of the headress could be seen. Basically, when you compare this original Coco Joes to yours, yours has a less skillfully executed version of every feature and detail that is on the original. There are far too many for it to be a coincedence, and there are also no deviations, other than quality and execution, between the master source and the copy. I can say without a doubt it was based on that cocojoes. So lets see if that can be contradicted by any other informtion you provided on it

We'll have to take into consideration your dating it at 40 years, and if Cocojoes was making that piece then. That puts it late 60's or early 70's. I don;t know for sure when that CCJ's was first produced, but CCJ's was definitely around then. So that fits our timeline.
But: How do you know for sure its date of at least 40 years? That part is always sketchy unless you actually have had that tiki for 40 years. Rip the velvet off and see if it was signed or dated underneath. The velevet was probably placed there after it was purchased by the buyer. It could be hiding a secret pirate treasure map as well.

Hope that helps.

On 2010-02-03 20:50, kahalakruzer wrote:
Buzzy, you should go to Del Taco. That 3 dollars could get you 9 tacos on a Tuesday, or 1.5 lbs of bean and cheese burritos any day of the week! You don't have to pay me for my unsolicited answer.:wink:

I'm all about Taco Tuesdays. I even go walk in so I can stock up on ketchup, napkins, and hot sauce. I actually call it "grocery" shopping. If they didn't have the bathrooms outside the restaurant, I'd paobably get my toilet paper there too. We even have Taco Thursday at the one by my house now. The usual 3 tacos for $1.09 with the bonus special three chicken soft tacos for $1.19. If you type in taco tuesday on search, half the posts are mine...

On 2010-02-03 21:04, Jungle Trader wrote:
That's a shame, where's pali-uli?

Hopefully out there somewhere trying to find something that's actually "tiki".

Buzzy Out!

[ Edited by: Bay Park Buzzy 2010-02-07 12:54 ]